Naperville teen designs Holocaust memorial Web site
His capacity for empathy and ability to act on it belie the fact that he's only 14.
Zak Kolar of Naperville isn't newly aware of the fact that 11 million people perished during the Holocaust, 6 million of whom were Jews. The member of Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville, who has attended religious education classes since age 5, has studied the Holocaust and observed Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
What struck him this past summer while attending a holiday memorial service, however, was the fact that many of the Jews who died in the Holocaust left no one behind to honor their memories. The rabbi talked during the service about taking a moment to remember the victims of the Holocaust, Kolar recalled. While wanting to memorialize the victims, he said, it seemed insufficient to do so only en masse and not as individuals.
"It doesn't seem right. We say a prayer, but each one is only getting one 6-millionth of it. It gives more dignity and honor to be remembered as an individual person," he said.
Kolar, who had recently learned how to design Web sites, set about creating Each of Us Has a Name ( www.eachofushasaname.org ). His objective is to collect the names and any available birth and death information about Holocaust victims and make the information available to memorialize individuals one by one.
An important component of Judaism, Kolar explained, is Yahrzeit, or the yearly anniversary of one's death, commemorated by the recitation by loved ones of the prayer called the Mourner's Kaddish. Each of Us Has a Name will post individual victims' names at the time of their Yahrzeit.
"I want someone to be able to get a weekly list of Yahrzeit so if they're going to services, they can say Kaddish for that person," said Kolar. "The goal is to have someone saying Kaddish for every person."
Kolar said that he's learned the importance, in Judaism, of being remembered.
"That's important so that the spirit can live on forever," he said. The Mourner's Kaddish "never actually references death. It's about life. It talks about one's spirit that will live on forever."
Kolar is hoping to collect names from any available source. A woman he met at the Illinois Holocaust Museum provided her grandfather's name to be the first one entered on the Web site. Kolar would like to find people without surviving relatives but realizes those will be difficult, if not impossible, to identify. Ultimately, he said, he'd like to have 6 million names, but for the time being he would be happy with several thousand.
Kolar said that while there are Web sites listing the names of Holocaust victims, to the best of his knowledge there are none that encourage their remembrance on an individual basis. His father, Brad Kolar, added that existing Web sites seem to be more "passive. This actively helps someone get remembered."
Kolar is justifiably proud of his son on several counts.
"He has tremendous empathy," he said. "Just the idea that there may be a person unremembered or unmentioned, that's what touched him the most. He has a tremendous capacity to put himself in another person's place."
Furthermore, Kolar is amazed at his son's pro-activeness.
"To muster these kinds of feelings is incredible," he said. "And his initiative to do something with that feeling and then use his skills to put together the Web site -- I'm proud on so many different levels.
"In my mind, observing Yahrzeit is how someone can live on and become almost immortal," Brad Kolar continued. "In other faiths, one lives on by the soul going to heaven. In Judaism, it's about how we've touched other peoples' lives and how other people can carry your name forward. One of the biggest curses in Judaism is to not be remembered and to fade into oblivion. Zak is trying to prevent that from happening,"
Zak Kolar said that remembering the 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims individually has tremendous value.
"People can think of the number, but it's hard to grasp that everyone was actually a person who was living and had their own story," he said.
